The number of people with HIV continues to grow. Because of the lack of education campaigns, especially young people are losing their fear of HIV. Our client, the pharmaceutical company GSK, therefore wanted to create a campaign targeted at homosexuals, bisexuals and women in a committed relationship and, secondarily, at the whole population, including teenagers, that would raise awareness of the danger of HIV and possible prevention while also helping to increase the number of people tested.
One of the main messages of the campaign had to be that not even faithful women in a committed relationship are immune from the threat of HIV, as they can have a bisexual partner who has been unfaithful with a bisexual or homosexual man. Statistics indicate that more than 70% or registered HIV cases comprise bisexual and homosexual men. In relation to that, we conducted a survey of public opinion from which it is apparent that four out of ten Czech men are unfaithful, but only one out of ten of those who are unfaithful get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. At the same time, we discovered that 120,000 men would be unfaithful to their partner with another man and would thus be in contact with the highest-risk group..
The press conference at which we presented the results of the survey became a media hit in a single day. The event was broadcast live on ČT24 and was attended by representatives of 20 media outlets, including those with the most extensive coverage (iDNES.cz, Novinky.cz, ČT, TV Barrandov, Český rozhlas, Impuls, Frekvence 1), as well as ČTK. In addition to the press conference, we issued press releases focused on additional aspects of the topic.
Another key point of the project was a visual campaign in mass transit vehicles in Prague, Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň and Karlovy Vary. A visual warning of the risk of HIV in relationships where the man is unfaithful to his partner with other men was designed for this campaign.
The campaign was extraordinarily successful, resulting in 200 media outputs with AVE of more than CZK 10 million and reaching an audience of 50 million. We appeared in, for example, Události on ČT1, Devadesátka on ČT24, on the radio stations Impuls and Frekvence 1 and on the iDNES.cz and Novinky.cz servers. The visual campaign appeared in more than 500 mass transit vehicles throughout the Czech Republic. The project also won first place in the 2016 Czech PR Awards in the Pharmacy, Health Care Sector category. However, a far more important result was that the number of people tested increased by 20% and a record number of HIV cases were detected.